CAREER:San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA, faculty member, 2006–. Teacher of writing workshops; artistic consultant to Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies; guest speaker on race, literature, and music at various venues, including Princetown Fine Arts Work Center, University of California at Santa Cruz, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Rapper under stage name Kodiak Brinks.

AWARDS, HONORS: Edgar Allen Poe Award nomination, Mystery Writers of America, 2004, for short story "Crown Heist"; Best Book of 2005 designation, San Francisco Chronicle; PEN/Faulkner Writers in the Schools grant, 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Adam Mansbach's debut novel, Shackling Water, traces the path of talented young saxophone player Latif James-Pearson as he journeys to New York City in search of his inspiration, musician Albert Van Horn. Latif is a jazz musician trying to make his way in a hip-hop culture. He finds his niche with the established musicians by becoming a petty drug dealer, but this backfires when he becomes addicted himself. A Kirkus Reviews writer found that "Mansbach's skill could have sustained an epic," adding that the book's brevity is a weakness. Nevertheless, the reviewer recommended Shackling Water as "a wonderful accomplishment." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman praised the author for writing "with authority, precision, and verve." Shackling Water was compared to James Baldwin's classic Sonny's Blues in Library Journal by Roger A. Berger, who also enjoyed the author's "fiercely textured prose," especially in the first third of the novel.

In Angry Black White Boy; or, The Miscegenation of Macon Detornay, Mansbach writes of Macon, a white youth in suburban Boston who is a fan of hip-hop during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this story, the author "interrogates the concept of whiteness, a term with which he is decidedly uncomfortable," according to Scott Thill in a review for AlterNet. Bookslut online reviewer Elizabeth Kiem commented that Angry Black White Boy "acknowledges the assimilation of hip-hop culture by whites with a mix of resentment and resignation," in a story that is presented in a series of "raucous vignettes."

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